In addition to running by Walski, owner Franck Bywalski travels extensively for his career as an extreme sports film producer. To monitor his retail business, Franck needed a POS he could access from anywhere.

Inspired by a passion for extreme sports and an interest in promoting up-and-coming surf brands, Franck established his titular store as a way of introducing those brands to a previously untapped urban audience.

But because he still maintains his career as an extreme sports film producer, Franck frequently travels to remote locations and spends a great deal of time away from the by Walski store. He needed to find a workaround for an impossible situation: managing and monitoring a retail business while hundreds or thousands of miles away from the actual shop.

“Vend allows me to dip into the system from my mobile phone — so if I’m ever feeling curious about how well we’re performing while I’m away from the store, I can easily check.”

Martyn Duncan, Store Manager at by Walski

The solution

by Walski chose Vend for its cloud capabilities (which allow management to check on the business from anywhere) and expanded online sales by using Vend Ecommerce.

To overcome the on-location issue, by Walski turned to the cloud. Now, Franck and his team can use their mobile devices to access Vend no matter where they are in the world.

by Walski run Vend on the shop floor via iPads, and the team access it via MacBooks in the office to view reports and data.

Using Vend Reporting, which provides them with in-depth analytics on business performance, the team can see which products are selling and when they’re selling; manage inventory and stock orders; and build a robust customer database.

Now, by Walski invites its customers to in-store functions such as art exhibitions, video screenings, and film premieres and uses Vend to create a seamless, modern customer experience.

In addition to using Vend in-store and Vend Ecommerce online, by Walski chose PayPal for payments.

“We need to be able to keep a close eye on what is or isn’t selling and to make buying decisions quickly. Vend lets us do this with the press of a button, and we can easily see sales and product information in great detail and get a complete picture of the day’s trading.”

Vend has given by Walski the necessary tools to run a modern omnichannel business and has made life easier for its team.

By using Vend in-store and online, by Walski is able to keep track of and manage all its inventory from one place; to instantly track business performance and data from anywhere in the world; and to implement buying decisions with the click of a button.

The team love how simple Vend is to use. It eliminates the need for manual data entry and saves them three hours per week on admin — and the ability to quickly add bestselling products to the Sell screen frees up much-needed time on busy weekends.

Vend has also been “invaluable in helping us transition into an omnichannel retailer,” according to employee Marlene Jordaan-Hart. “With Vend Ecommerce, we’re able to list everything online that we have in-store and monitor all our stock movements together, so we always know what we have available.”

“I certainly recommend Vend for other retailers. It’s a great modern POS system that just makes your life a lot easier and saves you so much time.”